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Session 45 - Supernovae.
Display session, Tuesday, January 14
Metropolitan Ballroom,
Supernova 1987A focused attention on the critical role of hydrodynamic instabilities in the evolution of supernovae (Arnett, D., Fryxell, B.A., and Müller, E., 1989, ApJ, 341, L63.) The earlier than expected detection of gamma rays from the core elements ^56Ni and ^56Co and their anomalously high velocities, together with the spectroscopic puzzle referred to as the Bochum event (Hanuschik. R.W. and Dachs, J., 1987, Aamp;A, 192, L29; Shigeyama, T., and Nomoto, K., 1990, ApJ, 360, 242), all suggest strong mixing of the core outwards into the hydrogen envelope due to the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability. We are developing an experiment using the Nova laser to test the modeling of shock induced RT instabilties under SN-relevant conditions, both in 2D (Kane, J., et al., submitted, ApJ Lett., Oct. 1996) and 3D (Marinak, M.M., Remington, B.A., et al., 1995, PRL, 75, 3677.) The target consists of a two-layer planar package composed of 85 \mum Cu backed by 500 \mum CH_2 with a well defined ripple at the interface. The Nova laser is used to launch a 10-15 Mbar shock across the interface, which initiates the RT instability as the interface decelerates. This resembles the situation at the O-He, and He-H interfaces of a core collapse supernova at intermediate times, \approx 10^3 - 10^4 s. Modeling of the experiment is done using the hydrodynamics codes HYADES and CALE, and the supernova code PROMETHEUS. Results of the experiments and simulations will be presented, and possible implications for supernova modeling will be discussed. *Work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract number W-7405-ENG-48.
